#the point is that it's EZRAN BIRTHDAY WISH HIM A HAPPY BIRTHDAY

[imminent-danger-came]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEAUTIFUL BABY BOY

[ask-runaan-anything]

Hi Runaan! Btw it's my birthday on Dec 15 and a birthday wish from my fav assassin would make my day - but anyway I was wondering if we could have a story? I love the stories on these blogs and I've been wondering about right before you left for your mission. I know Ethari told you Rayla shouldn't go, but I'd like the full story. Like, did Ethari approve of the motives? The targets? What did the assassin team think? I basically just want to hear about the preparation.

Happy birthday, little shadow. I wish you a day of peace and joy, and may you be most content.

Will you truly find contentment in these dark and angsty details? *shakes head* Humans have very strange birthday traditions, indeed. But very well. Rayla has patiently instructed me that birthday wishes are very important, so if this is your wish, then you should have it.

Enjoy your extra helping of angst, then.

The news of the humans’ vile attack at the Storm Spire reached the Silvergrove with hurricane force and took us all by storm. We were all angry, sorrowful, and ashamed that two of our most honorable elves had apparently fled, abandoning their precious duty. I had to stand before the Queen of the Dragons and let her rage and shout at my friends, at my choices, at my faulty judgment in sending them to her. My eardrums nearly burst under the force of her fury. I knew she would get to her point eventually, and I knew what that point would be, but the leader of the Moonshadow assassins does not interrupt the Queen of the Dragons, even on a good day. And that was not a good day. So I let her continue, and I took her thunderous words with an agonized heart and stubborn silence.

I didn’t realize Rayla had followed me out into the forest until she shouted--shouted--at Queen Zubeia to stop tangling my hair with her fury. I nearly had a heart attack when the queen whipped her head toward Rayla and growled. I knew what she was seeing: the living child of her egg’s failed defenders. And in her state of mind--her grief and fury--she might’ve done something we would all would regret.

I did the only thing I could think of to distract the angry dragon from taking tragic revenge. I drew my swords on her and called her out. “Justice belongs to the Moonshadow elves, Queen Zubeia, not to you. If you take one innocent life in revenge for another, that is not justice.”

She glanced back at me, and I could feel the volcano of emotions seething in her eyes. Rayla froze across the clearing. 

Queen Zubeia’s tail lashed out, a lazy whip of deadly muscle. I did my best to avoid its full strike, but even the most agile of assassins will have a hard time defending against an adult arch-dragon. For my backtalk, I ended up tumbled in a heap, feeling my shirt soak through. Before I could even think about getting back to my feet, Rayla was standing over me, her hands in fists, staring up at the enraged dragon.

I held one of Rayla’s ankles, in case this was the end. I wanted her to know that I was still with her. Queen Zubeia roared down at us, but Rayla didn’t flinch. I barely heard her words over the ringing in my ears as she said, “I’ll go with him. I’m an assassin, too. Let me prove myself, to both of you.”

“Rayla, no....”

Rayla knelt by my side and pulled off her hoodie, pressing it against my wounds. I was proud and relieved to see that she wasn’t scared, only handling things as best she could.

“This idea has merit,” the queen said. “Runaan, your expert opinion?”

Rayla was well trained. I’d seen to it myself. And taking her on a mission of revenge was slightly safer than letting Queen Zubeia bite her in half right in front of me. I’d managed to finagle a second option. I’d get no chance to force a third. “She is worthy.”

The queen’s toothy smile was the darkest thing I’d ever seen. “Then you will take this dishonored assassin with you. You will travel to Katolis and take its king, in retribution for his murder of my husband.” Her great blue eyes flickered toward Rayla and back to me again. “And you will take its crown prince as well, in retribution for the murder of my son.”

I felt her words burn into me. The deed was done, the mission given.

Rayla gasped. “But he just said that taking one innocent life in revenge for another isn’t justice,” she blurted.

“Perhaps not for the Queen of the Dragons,” Zubeia purred. “But you are assassins. You are Justice. If Runaan wishes to play at merciful compromises, then he had better bring his best game, little elfling. Now, you’d best tend to him before he bleeds out. I fear this mission will fail if his chosen successor has to lead it.... considering...”

Zubeia departed in a thunderous rush of wind, and Rayla used all her years of training to patch me up. She hadn’t even gotten me back to the village before my assassins rushed over to help.

All was chaos for some while, and I admit I don’t remember all of it. But I woke safe at home in my bed, with Ethari bending worriedly over me. He kissed my forehead, and then my hands, and he murmured, “What have you done, my heart?”

I had to tell him. Rayla didn’t understand enough of the subtleties. I had to save Rayla, and the cost of that was bringing her to Katolis with me--and taking an innocent prince, in her place. It was the best I could do, but Ethari was devastated.

He asked me to explain it again and again, hoping for a different story, a loophole. But the binding ribbon is smooth and has no loops. I was tied down, and so was Rayla. There is no way to release one’s duty as an assassin, save for death itself.

Ethari is a gentle elf. He drapes his workshop in pretty stones and drenches it with light. He plays music, and he dances, and he laughs freely. He is pure and precious, and I’ve worked hard to help him remain as soft and gentle as possible, despite his ardent fondness for an unlucky assassin leader. But this... this chaos burst through his workshop door and slapped him across the face. Neither of us could hide or disguise it anymore. Death was always present in the Silvergrove. It has always shadowed me. But after that it moved into the tree house with us, and it brought its friends: Shame, Sorrow, and Heartbreak.

I healed up, on the outside. But none of us truly healed within, not with the mission looming over us all. I was bound to Queen Zubeia’s will, and through me, my assassins... and my craftsman... and my newest squad member, Rayla. Binding ribbons for us all, ghosts of promises past, of loyalty and trust tightening in the face of disaster.

Ethari set to work making Rayla the best swords he could. He worked for weeks to make them perfect, and he hid in his workshop and hammered away his bone-deep fears for her future.

Rayla trained endlessly, eager to prove herself even more than she had in the past, and I had to encourage that. I had no intention of letting her anywhere near Prince Ezran, and I knew I’d have to take King Harrow myself, for Queen Zubeia’s satisfaction. But Rayla still needed to come with us, and that meant she had to be as ready as the rest of us were--on the outside, at least.

My assassins accepted the mission to Katolis readily. They accepted Rayla’s presence as a complex part of the arrangement, as well. Balancing one life with another is very Moonshadow, and so is balancing one death with another. The Moon is never afraid to go dark. It does so every month. For the sake of the murdered Dragon Prince, they understood the heavy balance in taking the prince of Katolis. And all the Silvergrove agreed that it was better to take an innocent human life than an innocent elven one. A distant life instead of Rayla’s, whom they all knew. They believed that I’d chosen well in sparing her.

I did not think so. I had only done my best to save Rayla’s life. But that only shifted the queen’s rage. Someone innocent was still going to die. And I was going to be the one to take that life. That was the price I was going to pay to save Rayla. 

I was relieved beyond words to find a way to avoid paying that price. Ezran himself showing me the egg of the Dragon Prince was a clear sign that several things were dangerously out of alignment. But the binding ribbons were on by then.

The last few weeks before my team left for Katolis seemed to take years. Ethari thought he was hiding his tears better than he truly was. I had no time for tears at all. Rayla and my assassins were in mission prep. And the Silvergrove woke each morning under a heavy fog of dark anticipation. 

The loss of the egg of the Dragon Prince lay at Lain and Tiadrin’s feet. My assassins, my best friends. I’d sent them to the Storm Spire. I needed to remedy their mistake myself. As an assassin, as a Moonshadow elf, as their friend, and as the soft-hearted fool who’d taken in their daughter when they left, their supposed failure was my mistake to fix.

The weight of all of Xadia’s expectations--their sorrow, rage, and thirst for vengeance--rested on my shoulders, every morning, every day, until that mission was complete. I became the linchpin in the mechanism that would deliver justice to a sorrowing land. I could not fail, I could not falter, not for an instant, not by a hairsbreadth. Not in the five months before we left Xadia, not when Rayla let Marcos live, not when she tried to stall me from the tower, and not when my assassins fell around me.

Xadia was waiting. The Silvergrove was waiting. Ethari was waiting. Everyone needed it to be over.

It’s a good thing my hair is already white.